The assessment of the receptive language skills of 1-8 class primary school students with intellectual disabilities, using the TROG-H test

Good communication skills play key role in the active social life participation of people with intellectual disabili- ties. National education standards (guidelines, curriculum etc.) related to special needs education place em- phasis on developing the language competencies of students with intellectual disabilities. On the other hand, based on the social model of disability, in the communication situation, besides the recipient (people with intellectual disabilities) we also focus on the communicator (in our case, the special education teacher). Based on the written rules of easy-to-read communication, the communicator is expected to adapt his or her message to the language competencies of the recipient At the same time, very few scientific results are available in Hungary about the characteristics of the language competencies of students with intellectual disabilities, as well as about the justification of the rules of creating easy-to-read messages. Thus we decided to conduct a research with intellectually disabled students who attend the 1-8. grades of primary school. The assessment of the understanding of grammatical structures was carried out with the TROG-H test (Hungarian adaptation of the Test for the Reception of Grammar) in two schools in Budapest, one in Kecskemét and one in Kiskőrös. 77 students with intellectual disabilities were involved in fulfilling the test from 129 of the base population. In this study, only partial results are reported. Based on the analysis of the data obtained from TROG-H test, 4 blocks of understanding negative structures, we found that the understanding of negative structures poses a serious challenge to students with intellectual disabilities. Accordingly, we propose a method for teaching nega- tive structures and new rules for producing an easy-to-read message. The research program which is implemented between 1/9/2020 and 30/6/2021 by the Gyula Juhász Faculty of Teacher Training, Szeged University, receives grants from the New National Excellence Program.